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Month: October 2017

For many years, the special appeal at the annual auction has allowed the congregation to fund something that – although not funded in the regular budget – would make a real difference in congregational experience. The special appeal has funded the benches on the patio, the lightweight tables in the social hall, the screens in the foyer and RE building, and the initial set up of the projector and screen in the sanctuary – and much more. This has all been incredible, but a few years ago we had the idea that we should do something even more “special” with the special appeal. We should share it.

It was the year we’d started sharing the plate with a community partner, and we knew how powerful it could be to be able to do something big and generous for one of our partners in Fort Collins – so that we wouldn’t just be keeping the money to grow the blessings in our community, but we’d be passing it on – which felt like living our values. And so we tried it out, and the results were incredible. Suddenly instead of raising $3,000 or $4,000 in the special appeal, we started raising $7,000, and then $9,000, and then….last year was the most amazing thing when we raised over $18,000. You can read about all the worship improvements that these funds enabled in this blog post from Chris Reed.

But maybe even more importantly, nearly $9,000 of this money went to our partners at Faith Family Hospitality to support the building of a patio and playground for children at their new transitional housing unit – a house that FFH leases from the city as a temporary home for up to seven families working towards self-sufficiency. This home is currently under renovation, and over $300,000 must be raised to complete this project. Which is why for this year’s Special Appeal, we’re going to keep supporting FFH and this important work!

This year we hope to raise $10,000 for FFH to replace dilapidated kitchen cabinets in the transitional home, known as Sherwood House. There are three communal kitchens in this old home, and all need new cabinets. And in turn, we’re planning to use the money we raise for Foothills to do a complete overhaul of our Foothills’ website – which as you may have noticed, very much needs it!

A few years ago we might have thought that this goal number was far out of our reach – but this congregation has shown us again and again that this is not the case. The generosity of this community has been incredibly inspiring, and ensures that we are in so many ways living up to our mission of truly unleashing courageous love both within and beyond our congregation.

Thank you for being a part of this important and extra-special effort, and hope to see you at the auction on November 11th! Get your tickets here.

If you’ve been in one of our services in the last few weeks, you’ve almost certainly noticed a few changes. I am very excited to announce that we have finished all of our worship improvements that were made possible by the generous outpouring of support at last year’s church auction special appeal.

Our goal was to improve the worship experience for everyone, especially to enhance the experience for those in the social hall given our frequent over-flow seating. Here’s a list of all the ways we’ve been able to do this as a result of your generosity:

We purchased more hymnals, so we are now able to provide good hymnal coverage for our very largest services.

Over the summer, we added live streaming of our services on the Foothills Facebook page. We have been thrilled with the reception that this has received online. Now, if you are traveling, are ill, or simply can’t be in the service for any reason, you can now join with all of us online. You can find the live streams on our Facebook page approximately 5 minutes before each service begins.

We reworked the stage lighting to make the stage more visually accessible.

We purchased and installed a new projector in the sanctuary, as well as a large video screen in the social hall.

We added a new computer and powerful software to allow us to seamlessly integrate a visual component to our services.

These last two changes mean that you can now expect to see the words to all of the songs we sing on the screen, as well as other readings or pertinent information. The possibilities go far beyond just those items, and we look forward to exploring how this potential can enrich our shared worship experience. We hope that this makes each element of our services more engaging, and more accessible to every individual joining with us.

The financial resources to create all of these improvements were made possible by your generosity in last year’s auction. Additionally, we were able to stretch those funds so effectively due to the immense generosity of some of our members who spent many hours assisting with this equipment installation. Wayne Brown, Mike McCarthy, Bruce Wagner, and Rich Roberts were invaluable in making this project happen.

Thank you all so much for helping us to reach more people through our worship services as we continue to unleash courageous love together. I can’t wait to see what becomes possible through your generosity in this year’s auction!

We had a great Congregational Forum last Sunday, October 15th. We had over 50 people attend as the Board gave an update of their activities and plans. This included reports from the newly established Board Committees – Personnel, Finance, Governance, Board Engagement and Space. This began with an overview on our new Governance structure, which can be found here.

The Space Committee had the greatest interest from the attendees and many positive comments and ideas were mentioned. The presentation and handout included data supporting the Board’s belief that, in order to live up to our mission, we need to start planning for a move to a new location.

The presentation was the beginning of a dialogue and engagement effort with the Congregation on dealing with the space issue. Follow-up dialogue sessions are planned for Monday, October 23 at 7 PM in the Triple RE room and Thursday, November 2 at 7 PM in the Triple RE room. Sign up hereto attend one or both of these meetings.

Brief updates from the Board Personnel Committee, Finance Committee, Governance Committee and the Board Engagement Committee were also provided. As you can see from Governance presentation, the management and operations of Personnel and Finance have been delegated to the Ministry with the Board Committee functioning in an oversight role. One major recent development of the Personnel Ministry Team (as instructed by the Board Care for Staff policies) is the creation of a fully updated Employee Handbook, which can be found here. The Board Governance Committee will monitor theBoard Policy Book and will be the resource for adding or changing policy.

The Board Engagement Committee is charged with ensuring more and improved Board engagement and communication with the Congregation. Three Big Questions (Future Oriented Questions) have been developed by the Board to facilitate discussions and input. The input gained from these conversations will enable the Board to develop a Vision of Shared Ministry – a list of goals for the coming year and beyond. Look for more information on this coming to your (snail) mail box soon!

This Vision will be the result of a process of gathering and distilling ideas from a wide range of individuals and constituencies within the congregation – and it will be an iterative process that will likely roll easily from one year into the next. In all cases, it will get to the heart of who we are and where we are going. There will be numerous opportunities for you to participate and provide your input.

Keep in touch with our Leadership Blog and we will be providing more detail on these initiatives and all the work of the Board over the next several months. Also if you ever want or need to access any of the documents related to Board work, you can follow this link for our archive.

I was immediately drawn to the “Called to Be” workshop held at Foothills in late September. I am recently retired and though I love hiking and biking, I have felt a need for something with more meaning. I hoped the day would give me some insight.

When it came time for the intensive “Clearness Committee” opportunities, I volunteered to be a focus person and describe my problem/issue to the group, who would ask me objective questions (as opposed to giving me advice). It was a little intimidating to be discussing my life with people I didn’t know (will they judge what I say?), and I probably didn’t trust that this group, with no experience of this method or knowledge of me, could offer much.

But, I was wrong. Each person asked questions that were from a different perspective – many with laser insight! By not offering me solutions, I felt supported in coming to my own conclusions. As the group asked questions, I could hear my answers. I could hear what I said….and what I didn’t. I could hear myself trying to justify some of my volunteer activities, and the lack of conviction in my voice. I could hear the examples I used, and how I talked about moving from New York (and being new to Colorado) as much as needing to find more meaning ; and realizing how these were clearly connected.

The most helpful part was the mirroring where each person in the group could say what they heard ME say. They told me where they heard energy and excitement. And where they didn’t. I learned that my words and my face could tell different stories. (I trust my face- my words tend to be what I ‘should’ do). I also knew the feedback was correct.

Why couldn’t I do this on my own? I don’t know. The ‘Clearness Committee’ does just that- it takes the jumble of things in your mind, and gives clarity. Maybe it highlights what you knew all along.

After this experience, I knew what to pursue, and what to let go. That sounds so simple, but trying to do this alone was a round and round experience of getting nowhere – I brought no new insights to myself. Based on the group’s input, I have already made some changes in my current volunteer work. It is gratifying to better understand that what I felt I ‘should’ be doing may not be a good fit for me.

At the end I felt, and I hope the group felt, that we had accomplished something important. They had helped me define my path forward. I felt close to these people who were learning about my life and giving me loving attention. It is so interesting that a group of people, who had never met me, could be so helpful.

A note from Our Music Visioning Team, submitted by member, Sue Sullivan

Last January, we heard many requests from members of our choir to take the time and the opportunity to look deeply at what we could ask for and aspire to in the way of music ministry at Foothills. Our former music director had been here for a dozen years and the director before him served for a decade as well. As a result of these long tenures, it has been many years since this congregation has asked itself – in a deep and open-to-all possibilities way — how we could imagine music ministry manifesting at Foothills.

The Committee on Shared Ministry (which consists of Glenn Pearson, Sally Harris, Anne Hall, Herb Orrell and myself), as part of its on-going responsibility to gather effective and meaningful feedback about how Foothills is manifesting its various ministries and how we might unleash more courageous love in our community and beyond, has taken on the leadership of this task of exploring the wide range of possibilities for music to manifest in our faith and our community, and to listen deeply to what our music makers and our whole Foothills community would find meaningful, transformative, creative, and powerful.

To that end, the COSM convened a sub-task force (composed of myself and Herb, plus two non-COSM members, Gretchen O’Dell, Dave Montanari, and in partnership with Rev. Haley) are beginning a multi-step process of:

gathering feedback from Unitarian congregations and other churches known for their strong and innovative music ministries

reporting back to the congregation about the ideas and programming we discover in those interviews

asking members of the congregation as a whole to take a music visioning survey, which will include questions about what has been meaningful or transformative in our own experiences of music ministry at Foothills in the past and what new possibilities we might wish to explore in the future

holding small-group feedback circles for various groups within the church who make the music we experience, as well specific groups of people whose experience of music ministry we would like to understand more deeply

gathering up all that visioning and feedback and reporting back to the congregation as a whole what we heard and how that can be shaped into a vision of how music manifests as a ministry at Foothills in the coming years

and finally, writing a detailed job description of what sort of candidate would be the right kind of leader for this ministry in our church, including such details as part-time or full, choir director or music director or music minister.

We intend to post this position by December in order to begin a nationwide search through Unitarian Universalist circles and networks. This would typically conclude around April with the start of the new person by mid-summer. We are most grateful and happy to have the musical leadership of Chris Reed as our Interim Music Director through next May as we conduct this search. Chris is eligible to apply for this position, and he will be working with Gretchen in December after the position is finalized, to discern if and how he sees this is a potential fit.

We are digging in right away to our first task, which is asking the music directors of congregations with nationally known music ministries to tell us about their music programs. We’ll ask what works and what doesn’t, what they love about it, how it relates to the rest of the church’s programming. We’ll ask how many different avenues are there for people to create music in their ministry and whether they use music as an outreach to the larger community. What instruments do they use and where do they find the pieces they perform? How do children and youth participate in music? How do people learn music in these churches? How does music turn up as a spiritual practice?

After we gather this feedback, we’ll report our findings back to you and craft a survey to help identify what you have found to be powerful and transformative in the past and what new possibilities you would like us to pursue musically. We will also hold small-group feedback circles to ask and listen to your experiences and hopes about music in our collective life, with both the makers of music in our church and those who experience it deeply and meaningfully.

We are very excited about this chance to be intentional, expansive, creative, and transformative as we re-vision music as a ministry and a spiritual practice here at Foothills Unitarian, and we look forward to hearing from you!